Polarities and Spectrums (with a Halloween Treat)

Currently, I am highly preoccupied with our (now) annual trip to the Netherlands for ROADBURN. Yay!

There are already 40 bands confirmed. This year I find myself coming into the festival knowing even fewer bands than last year. My worse fear is discovering that I love a band two weeks after I had the opportunity to see them live in Tilberg. Terrible, terrible!

Soooooo...I am on musical recon, baby!

First, if y'all have never been to this site:

www.metal-archives.com

It gives a handy-dandy breakdown of alotta bands without too much muss or fuss and I like having ready access to discographies and geographic origin without having to do a google search every time I have the thought.

The first band I checked out was Blues Pills.

I went to them first because I love Graveyard and when I heard about another Swede band rockin' the blues I got very excited. The opening retro wah/fuzz guitar/funfest of their first song, Bliss (on their EP of the same name), immediately put a big fat happy smile on my face. So promising! So true blue-blues-rock and roll! And then...

...the girl started singing....and she sings on every track. I checked.

I have a difficult time with female vocals in rowdier music. But this little gal Elin has a real set of pipes. Jury is still out. Y'all check it out and tell me what you think.

Is she laying it down with the righteous right hand? or over singing? Her sounds make me sort of uncomfortable sometimes but the music makes me so happy...so confused...

On the other end of the vocal spectrum there is Wo Fat. Between naming themselves after an O.G. Hawaii 5-O villain and being from Texas they pretty much had me at Wo.

I love their singer (for lack of a better word). He is awkward and seems to struggle from time to time getting the words out and in the right place in the music. It bothered me for a split second until I realized that he was a redneck not a singer. I love rednecks. I am a redneck. Rednecks are bad to the bone. When you have a band committed to spending an entire album educating the too-modern-for-their-own-good masses about the Noche Del Chupacabra (that's "Night of the Chupacabra" and you may want to google "chupacabra" if you are too North of Mex to know) and using songs like "Bayou Juju" to do it, darn straight you want a hill billy telling the story.

But they are also not afraid to let the music do the talking as demonstrated by the title track. Please enjoy the next 15, singer-less minutes of butt kickery accented by voodoo drums.

They have four full length albums. If there is a fun, rock and roll bone in your body, you will own at least two of them. They are going to be amazing live.




I also checked out A Forest of Stars and their album A Shadowplay for Yesterdays, which they will be playing at Roadburn. Immediate frowny face. It listens like Dio doing really theatrical books on tape. Here is a 30 second clip. I dare you to check it out and come up with a more appropriate description. (You won't.)

Just to show you that context is EVERYTHING and the power of CG shadow puppets (I do so love shadow puppets!)...give yourself a Halloween treat and take 8 1/2 minutes to watch the video for their song Gatherer of the Pure. It took a full year to complete. It is hands down the coolest music video I have ever seen...and your life is not complete until you've seen a shadow puppet take it in the eye with a pair of scissors.

If you are a 90's music kid like me, Alcest and their album Les Voyages de L'ame (live at RB, too!) is a dream come true. Also to be greatly enjoyed if you have secret emo tendencies (Dan!) or are a total sucker for straight up, often lovely, evocative sound (Ross).

It is not the most musically brilliant album but it has ethereal layers, amazing production and very solid musicianship. Alcest is very, very French to me. This can be awesome or terrible dependent upon your feelings toward, well...French things. And be forewarned, sometimes the singer has to scr-emo it out.

The more I listen to this album, the more I listen to it. My love for it has somehow crept into a full enjoyment of everything this band has put out. They are quickly becoming one of my favorites for Evoking or Sustaining a case of Mood.

So there you have it. 


Have a lovely All Hallow's and pay some respects to your ancestors in some small way. 


Okay? OK. More to come.
xo

Earthless/ Phyllis Dillon/PITCTIAH/The Professor Brothers

Greetings and salutations from Brooklyn, NY.  Old Adrian Bozman just left yesterday after fun couple days of lifting weights and getting groped by men.  Seriously.. we went to this thing called Blackout NYC which was about 6 straight rooms of dudes dry humping us. Awful.  Maybe that's a story better left for face to face conversation..

Anyway, lets start off with some epic jamz. I first heard these guys on the ISIS pandora station and was immediately hooked. I played this album in the gym earlier this week and a had a lot of folks come up to me and be like "what is this?? It's awesome" Great for lifting, great for vibing, great all around. I'm thinking I might be really late to the party on these guys, but I still thought I'd share.

I'm glad Ross put some Dub in here, which I also love. It inspired me to dig up an old favorite, Phyllis Dillon, the Queen of Jamaican Soul. One life to live is a great album.  Here's one of her gems from the late 60s and maybe her most popular track. If this tune doesn't bury itself in your brain and get stuck there for weeks, you're not human.

Next up is Please Inform The Captain This Is a Hijack (PITCTIAH). Post punk, hardcore mixed with some funk and lots of samples.  I love these guys and have been searching for their record for years now with no luck.  Heard about them in high school actually and have been listening to what I can find online since.

And last, but not least, I'll leave you with a real crowd pleaser.. "The Professor Brothers". Brain child of Brad Neely, these videos are perhaps more informative than anything else. Some of you guys aren't Americans so you might not know much about our presidents. Take notes.

                          

The Swedish connection

Ok guys! It's my turn to spread some of the music I've been listening too lately. Expect a strong Scandinavian theme - not just because it's the music I know the best, but mostly because I'm sure you guys already know that the latest OM is amazing and that Nate Hall (U.S. Christmas) released that great solo album etc.

Really this blog should've started 15 years ago, as I was far deeper into new music back then (before kids, 60h work weeks etc)... But then again my lists would mostly have consisted of Japanese hardcore back then...

So... We begin our journey with the AMAZING debut album by GOAT. They are from Sweden, but I'm guessing you could not tell as they are heavily influenced by... Eh... Alot of stuff. Shoegazing-voodoo-african-kraut? I'll let you hear it (you WILL love them!).

They are taking the same route as fellow Swedes Ghost, and they are keeping their identities hidden and they play masked. They kick Ghost's butt in most areas though!

Their debut "World music" apparently can be downloaded from here: http://afrocubanlatinjazz4.blogspot.se/2012/08/goat-world-music-suecia2012-320k.html

Next up is an old one, but one that you yanks/Canadicks might have missed - and we seriously can't have that happening as it might be my favorite band in the whole genre of slow-doom-metal!

ABANDON from Gothenburg, Sweden, didn't have an easy existence. Not only did one member got sent to jail, but around the same time the singer killed himself, and the two other blokes got cancer... No wonder they sounded like they did. They released two LPs ("In reality we suffer" and their masterpiece "The dead end") until their career (and for some of them their lives) came to an halt.

Here's the opening track from the dead end - it's pure magic!

And here's another one. Hell, I'll NEVER get tired of this record!

Onto another gem from the same city as Abandon - URAN GBG. There is something of an kraut revival going on (well... Like a couple of bands are blending the kraut athomsphere at least... More about this in my next post - it's not really a "scene" or anything), and the leading band is URAN.

However they are (probably because of drug use and that some of them are homeless) not very productive. The stuff they do however is fucking golden! Check out this little gem from their debut LP

Ok - no post without something actually a bit faster... After all I grew up on a strict diet of D.R.I, M.D.C and Jerry's kids etc...

Here's a local band from my hometown UNDERGÅNG with a live clip from the release party of their latest record "The mother of armageddon". They are know to play gigs that seriously gets out of line (think early poison idea/dwarves - blood, violence etc) and this show did not disappoint (se the other parts if interested). Check them out on record too, they are definetly worth it. thrashy-american hardcore with their own flavour.

You should be able to find all of these records on the interwebz - if not, and you want them just drop me an email and I'll send them to you.

Ok, that's a wrap - next time I'll probably dare to go out of my comfort zone (Sweden) and perhaps even reach into the rest of Scandinavia! Gimme some feedback - I'd love that - and sorry for my english (we can take it in Swedish or German if you prefer that) :-)

Lotek / Mothers of Gut / Acid Witch

Three items to post today, reflecting things I've been listening to lately. 

First, "International Rudeboy Dubs," by Lotek & the Ubiquitous Dub Legitimizers:

I like dub.  I listen to it a lot.  I don't know that much about it, but I have strong feelings about how it's supposed to sound.  It's not supposed to sound like a grant-money campaign for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  It's supposed to sound like a piece of music that hit its head on something pretty forcefully, and is now staggering about trying to regain its bearings.  IMHO, there is too much of the former these days--but this is the latter.

Second, "The Inanimate Sermon," by Mothers of Gut:

The "Mothers of Gut."  What a god-awful name; I almost couldn't get past it.  Still, this outfit is great.  Simultaneously lush and drone-y; kind of psychedelic, and unequivocally (and unapologetically, which I like) beautiful.  Also, not very wordy--you all will see that I don't like singing that much (although the singing here is very nice).  I don't know anything about them.  Apparently they're from Los Angeles. 

Finally, "Stoned," by Acid Witch.  A taste:



These guys rip!  Love it!  Are they old hat as far as doom goes?  I'd never heard of them when I stumbled upon them a few months ago.  I will now prove their radness without any mention of their music.  Here are the lyrics for "Thundering Hooves," the linked-to song:

Thundering hooves!
Thundering hooves!
(etc.)

QED.

Bonus fourth item: this weekend I read "Dune."  Parts I liked; parts I didn't.  I'm still chewing.  It amused me that the technique for exoticizing any person/institution/phenomenon was simply to give him/her/it an Arabic name.  I think this is only my second foray into science fiction--my first being "Stranger from a Strange Land," which book I received from Kim and Adrian.  Thanks guys!

I look forward to revisiting David Lynch's movie adaptation.  

I remember watching it w/ my parents when I was little and finding it too intense and scary to be enjoyable.